It’s a strange fact, however, that sometimes the knuckles of these bullshitters appear entirely unscuffed – that is, even the cleverest of writers can occasionally throw out an opinion of such shocking absurdity that one must step back in disbelief. This has, I am sad to say, recently been the case with critic and essayist Clive James, who has converted to the church of climate change denialism. Here, I’ll attempt to chop down the gnarled and pathetic-looking tree which James is barking up.

But that’s not all. Last Saturday I encountered a species of anti-sciencer rather more, shall we say, gauche and unlettered than Clive James. A mighty twenty-five of Edinburgh’s most indefatigable anti-vaxxers converged on the Scottish Parliament to express their opinion that ‘SWINE FLU IS A HOAX!’.

So which is the biggest hoax – climate change or swine flu? There’s only one way to find out – FIGHT!!!

The Clive James denialism story, such as it is, so far: James writes a dunderheaded piece on global warming, ‘In Praise of Scepticism‘, in which he claims that he ‘still can’t see that there is a scientific consensus’ on climate change. George Monbiot responds with an article which is equally daft in its own way, accusing James and other denialists of being so old and afraid of death that they react harshly to anything that reminds them of mortality. While I normally rather like Monbiot, this piece should be nominated for some kind of ‘Worst Amateur Psychology’ award. There are myriad reasons people become science-deniers, and there’s no compelling evidence that age is particularly important amongst them.

In any case, James is entirely unabashed. Last Friday, he was heard on BBC Radio 4 and seen in the BBC Magazine ‘responding’ to Monbiot with another well-written but utterly vacuous essay. Once again, the claim about a lack of consensus is made:

…from my own layman’s background reading I thought the reported scientific unanimity that global warming is man-made, and likely to be catastrophic, was always a more active area of scientific debate than you would have guessed from the way the media told the story.

This is exactly the sort of nonsensical claim one hears from idiot creationists, along the lines of ‘Steven Jay Gould didn’t agree with Richard Dawkins about evolution – this calls the reality of evolution into question’. This is so illogical it hardly bears dealing with, but it’s worth pointing out again that just because scientists disagree about how something happens, it in no way means that they disagree that it happens in the first place. Only someone with a gross misunderstanding of how science works would make a claim like the above. Sure, scientists disagree about climate change, but as pointed out here, it’s about esoteric stuff like ‘precisely how much stratospheric cooling can be attributed to ozone depletion rather than an enhanced greenhouse effect.’

This doesn't even need a caption.

The fact is that the overwhelming evidence published in the scientific journals suggests that man-made climate change is an unassailable fact. You can find a huge amount of that evidence, in the form of responses to sceptical questions, here. Not that James is bothered about things like evidence – he doesn’t give us any indication of where he’s been doing his ‘layman’s background reading’. The ExxonMobil site, maybe?

Onwards:

One of these few [denialist scientists I watched] was Prof Lindzen of MIT. I never could convince myself that the professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology knew less about the earth’s climate than I did, so I started to watch him. Hopeless on the media, Prof Lindzen is the sort of pundit with a four figure IQ who can somehow never figure out that you are supposed to talk into the microphone.

Here, James is trying to say that the denialist scientists are bumbling absent-minded professors who are being unfairly put down by the media-savvy alarmists in the environmentalist movement. In reality though, it appears Richard Lindzen has had a very successful media career, getting publicity for his denial of second-hand smoking, and writing loads of articles in top publications like the Wall Street Journal about his climate change scepticism. And, as an interesting aside, it appears that coal and oil companies are very happy to pay him lots of money to tell them nice things, possibly like ‘you’re not causing global warming’…

The number of scientists who endorsed the orthodox view increased also, but the number of those who didn’t went up instead of down. I couldn’t do the calculus, but I could count heads.

There were scores of eminent scientists who signed the 2007 open letter to the secretary general of the UN, and then later on there were hundreds quoted in the US senate minority reports.

It could be said that few of them had expertise in climate science, but that argument looked less decisive when you considered that climate science itself was exactly what they were bringing into question.

In another trick he appears to have learned from the Intelligent Design movement, James wants us to believe that totting up the numbers of scientists for and against an idea will uncover its truth or falsehood. Once again, it’s not the scientists, but the published evidence that matters. James points to none of this. Lists of names will not do. Unlike, say, scientists who may think things like theology are stuff and nonsense, anyone ‘bringing into question’ climate science has an Everest of evidence to block out.

It’s not even clear that ‘the number of those who didn’t [support the orthodox position]’ increased at any point. This bald assertion (apologies, Clive) is made with no evidential support whatsoever. And you know what? ‘No evidential support whatsover’ could be Clive James’ new catchphrase. We can only hope he realises he’s in the wrong and goes back to being the loveable and intelligent critic we once knew.

Look on their banners, ye mighty, and despair.

We move now from shooting fish in a barrel to taking a large amount of TNT and blowing up the fish packaging factory. A few days ago it became apparent that anti-science was hitting my own dear Edinburgh in the form of a swine flu vaccine protest. Keir has covered the lead-up and the aftermath, Mike has slagged the anti-vax website, and Alex has provided some extra info. What else can I add? Well, the anti-vaxxers gave us a couple of absolutely hilarious leaflets – including one of the most insane, paranoid and delusional things I’ve ever read. Here are a few choice quotes from a densely-typed double-sided sheet of A4 they were handing out (all the random capitalisation, underlines, bold type, and poor grammar is [sic]):

Fact#1 Vaccines DONOTPROTECT !!!
Fact#2 All Vaccines Cause diseases
Fact#3 All Vaccines Spread the diseases that people are injected with
Fact#4 All Vaccines Destroy the immune system & nervous system
Fact#5 All Vaccines Can Kill within 3 hours
Fact#6 Vaccine toxins, remaining from childhood, cause serious diseases in adults
Fact#7 All vaccines, includingmercury-freeones, are toxic, & can cause autism
Fact#8 Vaccination is the number one cause of cot death
Fact#9 HEALTHistheonlyimmunity!

…

Epidemics of smallpox, alltypesofflu, AIDS, measles, etc., are all caused by vaccination… Evil has always been here to destroy the good. The only way to stop annihilation, is to unite & love one another as one family worldwide… With Israel wanting to remainworldconquerors, as they have been for over 2000 years, they continue to pay £billions to fund globaldestruction… the target is to, therefore, destroypopulationsglobally. Debilitating and deadly viruses & chemicals, createdinlaboratories, are constantly dispersedbyplanesas‘chemtrails’… NewYork’smayorflouridated the city the day before 9/11 to cause confusion.

Holy shit. It was like a visit to David Icke’s website, but in real life! It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Oh no, wait – it is hilarious. The pamphlet is an absolute goldmine of wide-eyed, tinfoil hat craziness (I especially love the bit about ‘evil dictation’. TAKE THIS DOWN, NOW! MUAHAHAHA!). Clearly this stuff is just ravings, but what about the other antivax literature? The more sober leaflet I was given contained some stuff we can actually get our teeth into:

H1N1 MADE IN A LAB?

Virologist, Dr Adrian Gibbs claims ‘the consistent link with pig virus’s [sic] suggests that human activity was involved‘. Former US Naval Intelligence Officer Wayne Madson supports this claim saying that a top UN scientist suggested the strain had been genetically manufactured as a military biological weapon.

Zounds! But wait – on the other side of the leaflet…

Recently published research from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) is damming [sic] of the NHS Swine Flu Hotline stating that just 1 in 5 diagnosed with the illness actually had it, falling to a shocking 1 in 20 in the summer months. GP’s fared badly too, correctly assessing just 50% of cases. In just one week 36,000 of 40,000 Tamiflu prescriptions were wrongly prescribed needlessly raising the chance of virus mutation as well as hugely over-inflating official figures.

My diagnosis? These ignorant Luddites know they don’t like modern medicine, and they certainly know they don’t like vaccines, but they are so indiscriminate in their choice of paranoid attacks that they’re not bothered if it actually makes any sense. The first quote suggests that the virus was specially created to cause a pandemic for some shadowy greater purpose – ‘a corrupt global elite’s plan to vaccinate our nation’. The second suggests that the virus isn’t actually present in most cases. Doesn’t sound like this corrupt global elite are particularly, well, elite at spreading viruses, does it? They even end with a quote from Prince Philip:

‘If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.’

So, er, wait. Are viruses bad or not? If it’s going to lower population levels, should we not vaccinate against it? But I thought vaccines were evil! What the hell!?

This is the swine flu virus. It is not a hoax.

As you may expect, looking at what the virologist quoted above actually said reveals he’s been almost sue-ably misquoted. The paper, available here (open-access, hurrah!), in which the remarks are made actually suggests two hypothetical origins for the sudden appearance of the current H1N1 strain: 1) It didn’t actually appear suddenly, it evolved in the usual way in pigs and we didn’t notice because we haven’t been sampling them for viruses properly, or 2) it didn’t actually appear suddenly, it appeared during a particular process of pig vaccination which wasn’t sterilised properly, and nobody noticed until it spread to humans. Nowhere is the idea that the virus was deliberately ‘made in a lab’ even hinted at. This is simply an example of quote mining at its finest.

Before we scrunch the leaflet up and cast it into the furnace, let’s have a look at the HPA report mentioned in the second quote. Are these morons seriously suggesting that there was some kind of conspiracy to over-diagnose swine flu so that Evil Big Pharma could vaccinate more people? From the sounds of it, the NHS was in a state of serious confusion (understandably, since swine flu symptoms aren’t always noticeably different from those of seasonal flu, and they were diagnosing over the phone), not under the control of cackling Pharma puppet-masters. This conspiracy theory falls in the same way as scores of others – it posits an utterly implausible level of organisation on the part of the conspirators. The ultimate rejoinder – Watergate. The fact that the US government couldn’t properly hush up a small burglary entirely discredits vast, arcane conspiracies like ‘9/11 was a controlled demolition’ or indeed ‘Big Pharma are controlling the NHS’ on the basis of mere probability.

While Clive James would be utterly appalled at my comparison of him to these anti-vax loons, there are clear similarities. A baseless distrust of scientific evidence staring them in the face? Check. A smug, arrogant ‘I know better’ attitude? Check. The spinning of tales about faceless authorities manipulating people? Check. The quoting of heroic figures battling against a corrupt elite? Check. All these qualities and more are there in climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers.

What can we do about it? Showing, as I hope I have above, that their ideas are frankly barking is only half the answer. The problem of psychological contagion rears its ugly head – the mere suggestion that a) climate change might be a load of old rubbish or b) vaccines could harm your children inherently makes people suspicious and less likely to follow the advice of authority figures to do anything about them. How can we possibly get people to trust evidence-based advice? I’m afraid that, my friends, is a subject for another post.

mmmh Im a Luddite.. now there’s a thought.. you must be hedgehog hair boy…:) will be sending the peer reviewed articles over to Alex, so get ready…:)

I have no problem with science at all. I do, however, have problems with very badly and hastily enacted public health policy, which, as we know, is not based on science at all, but political dogma, expediency, public perception, cost, conflicting interests and from whom the politician is getting his next meal ticket from. or is that too skeptical.

Regarding comment “Is this where your final plan of rousing us all into militant action against scientific dissenters is finally put in to (sic) place. Can I be promoted to General?”

Such a revealing comment from Max highlights and personifies the true nature of this article and indeed this group’s general intent, whether they have the capacity to comprehend it, or not. The promotion of the use of military action against members of the public for reasons of difference of opinion is particularaly alarming and distasteful and belongs firmly in the past. Perhaps Max is suggesting a plan to create a secret scientific Gestapo has been concieved and is lurking, waiting behind dark curtains? It certainly appears so.

Nazi Germany relied on 2 devices to gain and maintain control; terror and propaganda, which incidentally form the backbone of today’s fearful paradigm of global pandemics and catastrophic climate collapse. The content is different yet the techniques used are the same. Highlight the problem (global warming, swine flu, jews, communists and gypies) and provide the solution (carbon credits, untested vaccines, genocide.)

The alarmists use a state of fear to preserve security and discipline and to eliminate threats, descent or challenges to the leadership. In this scenario freedom of speech is necessarily sacrificed in favour (as in Nazi Germany) of the threat of arrest and worse of anyone who spoke out, without trial nor explanation. Do this group of little nappy-boy Hitlers really understand what they are fighting for?

We are in the midst of a scientific dictatorship in which real evidence is disregarded in favour of lies. It is almost laughable that the pushers of a carbon debted world, and of a vaccinated global population ask those that question it to provide evidence without providing their own (hockey stick excluded)(65,000 deaths predicted…er…no less than 1000….er 284 so far with 80% underlying conditions excluded). Oh the appliance of science.

The fight for truth, justice and freedom of speech however shall always prevail; it is this very nature that supports man’s struggles to overcome the powers of opression, tyrany, lies and fear. The rejection of the swine flu vaccination programme and the stalling of Copenhagen is a welcome testament to this. Long may it continue.

Unlike this group of unfriendly little SS bed wetters I would give my life for a truly democratic and free world as did the many millions in the not so distant past for you.

You guys really are a good example of how government mind control is working a treat. I remember when students used to be free thinkers and protest against government force and power…now look at you, climate change ‘activists’ are at Copenhagen BEGGING their governments to pledge more of their money….haha..its quite sad really!!!

That said, he looked pretty good against Bill Maher who, despite my fondness for Religulous, is a complete fool when it comes to vaccines. In the past couple of years there has been a real pushback against vaccines (not unlike Britain) where parents are refusing to vaccinate their children. This has mainly been fomented by people like Bill Maher, Oprah, and Jim Carrey (!).

Stuart, it appears you have descended into hurling abuse and personal attacks as opposed to giving a constructive arguement. ‘Swivel-eyed maniac’, ‘everything he says in this is bullshit’…well, unfortunatley for you it is not. Have you checked the records for yourself because I have and everything he says is completely true. Global arctic ice has not dropped AT ALL since 1979. I think you need to spend a bit of time looking at the Illinois arctic sea extents records before claiming they are bullshit and while you are there you can check out the amount of land falling hurricanes on the US coast at the National Oceangraphic and Atmospheric Administration…not bullshit again. So swivel eyed he may be but he tells the truth and unlike the global climate change machine he does not ask that people believe the information that he churns out…only that people start to look for themselves. Its a simple enough suggestion but one that everybody appears to have completely sidelined preferring to sit down with a cuppa and sob over how hard done by the polar bears are on the latest planet earth episode, despite the fact that there numbers have risen substantially in recent years despite the fact the rich americans continue to go on annaul hunting trips to shoot as many of them as possible…funny that.

It’s also funny how actual data like the global sea ice extents graphs are only mentioned by the likes of Lord swivel-eyed Monckton, yet the proven distorted data that East Anglia University churns out is one of the key think tanks behind climate change. I trust you aware of the recent complaint the Russians have made against the univeristy for misrepresenting and changing the data they supplied as there contribution to global temperatures, proving YET AGAIN that this organisation is taking part in unethical and misleading practices in order to distort figures and give the impression of global warming, naughty naughty.

Alistair is completely right, for a group that call themselves the skeptics society you are the most unskeptical group of individuals I have ever heard of. You appear to be digesting and believing every piece of mainstream media drivel there is and trying to attack and discredit anybody that should be enlightened enough to have a look at the other arguements that don’t make the mainstream propaganda machine.
Time to wakey wakey me thinks!!

4) The UEA didn’t mess with any of the data. To quote Clive James, climate skeptic:

So what happened at the Climate Research Unit? Well, basically nothing new. A bunch of e-mails got hacked, or perhaps leaked. Some of the phrases that supposedly reveal skulduggery reveal a lot less when you put them in the context of what, we are told, was only locker-room enthusiasm.
In the correspondence columns of the scientific websites – where the level of discussion has consistently been miles above anything the mainstream media has provided for the last decade – there are already wise voices to warn that the sceptics should not make the same mistake as the believers by treating any slip they can find in the arguments of their opponents as evidence of the biggest fraud since Bernie Madoff made off with the money.

Derrrrrr…the Illinois Report is government funded and is put together from representatives of many different backgrounds including…surprise, surprise…Baxter Pharmaceutical Company….yeah must be right!!

Holy Crap Stuart did anyone not tell you that science and religion do not mix? The contradictions within your belief system must be truly tortuoes unless that is, you have peer review edidence that Jesus, Son of God, walker over water, once existed?

I understand how you are able to believe, as a matter of faith, the bullshit that so-called climate science is feeding to the congragation who are encouraged to go out and spread the word of fear and guilt, we are after all, arent we not Stuart, born sinners?

Thank you for pasting your reveling religious shrine. I think it sums up your group of fanatical potty-boy green fascists more than adequately. The image of righteousness stolen by the powers of evil is plain to see, the devil in disguise.

Science and religion, the ultimate quandary. Where science fails, religion moves in and deals with the matters that are not capable of proof.

Have you downloaded the CRU hacked evidence as I have yet Stuart? I think your comment, “only locker room enthusiasm” highlights the kind of blind ignorance the eco-religious nuts like yourself hold. The level of corruption and deceit from climate science’s elite (your preachers) is truly scandelous yet you cant even be bothered to look at it because it contradicts your point of view. That Stuart is a scandal in itself.

Ive just emailed two sets of data..
1, On Vitamin D selenium, why we’re deficient and the health consequences. It leads , in my opinion, to the question Why is there no public policy on the use of this Vitamin?
2, The issues with adjuvants and the problems with effectiveness for the ‘at risk’ population.

two very good online presentations on Vit D and research. Highly recommend you take a look…. one from Boston Uni Medical dept the other from San Diego Uni Medical dept

enjoy
alistair
wow this little debate descended pretty fast…

on climate:
Come on over to the Dark Side Troy…. its where every true skeptic belongs.
Forget Orthodoxy question EVERYTHING even your data and what we’re being fed.

As you ought to know science is not about consensus, and if the main source of data is corrupted at the beginning, then the outcomes from that data have to be questioned thoroughly. Policy ought not be formed until new investigations have either confirmed or denied the veracity of the claims.
Personally, there is one major aspect of the climate debate that has been ignored in Copenhagen… The Sun

I know that you think that we are all conspiracy nuts… on climate and its manipulation be it data or the weather itself (the weather manipulated?), but once in a while, out of the blue, there comes a little shining ray of…..

800,000 vaccines recalled
oh boy just keep talking dear doctor…. decrease in strength = increase in adjuvants…. ahhh but just keep talking… its safe… but we dont test for flu… ummmh just keep talking… it makes good business sense….. duh and keep talking

8 UK deaths and 8 miscarriages (official) reported among the ‘suspected side-effects’ in the UK alone!! But ofcourse they can’t prove it was the vaccine as the poor at risk groups were so near death anyway that they were on their way out as it was. If they’re that near bloody death why give it to them anyway?? And that doesn’t explain the miscarriages…

Oh yeah, almost forgot..here’s the source Stuart so you don’t have to waste your time looking for it…direct from the MHRA:

Alistair! OH SHIT! THIS IS THE GOVERNMENT TRYING TO KEEP YOU DOWN! They know about your anti-establishment love of Vitamin D and they’re intercepting your emails. This is the beginning of the end, people!

Next they’ll try and… oh God I can hardly even bear to type the words… they’ll try and VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN! Oh lord! We must stand firm against this tide of pure evil!

Stuart, when will you be going for your vaccine? Surely you should be setting a good example by becoming a flagship for pro-vacciners by having yours….after all you wouldn’t want to catch the swine flu over the festive season now would you. Oh, and could you get a friend to take a photograph just at the critical moment of injection and post it here for us all to see….I’m sure it would make a lot of people very happy!!!
Merry Christmas!!

Your quite right Alistai but the rudeness of Stuart particulalry to you when your just trying to send him a link is enough to drive anyone around the bend. And I’m quite serious about taking it if his beliefs about the vaccine and its effectiveness are so strong then he would surely be helping the nation by reducing the risk of swine flu spreading instead of just sitting blogging about it and expecting others to go along and take it. ‘Take your own medicine’ comes to mind.

Quite right Claire, because if someone supports any aspect of medical science they have to immediately gave it performed on them. Excuse me, I’m off to have an appendectomy, a dose of chemotherapy and a course of antimalarials.

Claire, you might be interested to know that I got my H1N1 vaccine shot yesterday. Whole process was totally disorganized and they clearly didn’t have enough for everybody. I think I cut in line in front of a bunch of old people. But that’s all beside the point. I got the shot, I feel fine, and best of all, I’m protected against swine flu.

Hey Mickey
hate to do this, but…. what do you mean by ‘protected’.
we’re in the domain of efficacy and effectiveness; vaccine-induced antibodies doesn’t directly translate into functional, real-world immunity…. and vested interests will trump your health anyday…